Breaking Ranks: Social Change in Military Communities

by Christopher Jessup

Breaking Ranks explores the complex inter-relationship of domestic and working lives in the context of the British and American armed forces, where families are required to manage particularly turbulent and demanding lifestyles.
Establishing and sustaining adult personal relationships and family goals and simultaneously maintaining the highest degree of professional military competence - including the ability to move anywhere in the world with little advance warning - demands a highly skilled balancing act.
The end of the Cold War brought a 'peace dividend' of redundancy for many British and American Service personnel. Can traditional military values like patriotism and service to the community survive such job insecurity? Why should Servicemen and women risk their lives in the future if unemployment is the likely reward?
How long will military authorities be able to exclude Servicewomen from reaching the very highest posts? For how much longer will the military establishment be allowed to exclude homosexuals from joining the Services?
This book explores the many social problems facing the armed forces today, and provides an invaluable practical manual in helping to understand them.

213 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 1996